AMD this morning launched its least expensive video chipset capable of DirectX 11 (and OpenGL 3.2) graphics. The ATI Radeon HD 5450 has all the same visual effects as the 5600 and 5800 lines but is trimmed down to 80 stream processors, 8 texture units and a 650MHz engine clock speed. Besides keeping the price low, the design allows for extremely quiet cards: it can either use a low-speed fan in a single slot or a completely fanless design in a slightly larger space.
